by George Schroeder, USA TODAY Sports

by George Schroeder, USA TODAY Sports

LOS ANGELES -- Somehow amid the swirling chaos -- singing and dancing and so much more â?? there was a moment of calm and quiet at midfield. Jack Swarbrick found Brian Kelly. Both men laughed, then embraced.

And he's right. Notre Dame's 22-13 victory over USC, which propelled the Fighting Irish into the BCS championship game, could have been so many other games in a magical season. By now, the formula has become familiar: dominant defense, inconsistent offense, a grinding effort â?? and another win. But here, finally, is Notre Dame's definition of perfection:

For now, anyway. Alabama remains to be played. Or Georgia. Whichever, the SEC champion will gun for that league's seventh consecutive national championship, surprising no one. But Notre Dame is playing for its 11th â?? and first since 1988 â?? and who saw it coming?

Not Swarbrick. Four years ago, he stood in the same tunnel at the Los Angeles Coliseum, experiencing a far different feeling. "You guys had me pinned up against the wall," he said, referring to reporters. Charlie Weis would last another season as coach, but USC had just whipped the Irish 38-3, illustrating what seemed to be a vast talent disparity.

Could the Irish ever close the gap with college football's elite? That night in the Coliseum, could you have imagined this? "No," Swarbrick said. "No." Notre Dame as a national power was faded history.

"But then you watch this team," said Joe Theismann, the former Notre Dame quarterback. "It has guts, it has determination, it has talent, it has leadership â?? and it has playmakers."

And now, it has a perfect regular season and a shot at another national title. "It's a great day to be an Irishman!" Theismann said just after the final gun.

A defining moment? In a season like this, there were so many. A narrow escape of Purdue â?? Purdue! â?? in the second game. A victory at Michigan State the next weekend that by comparison seemed like utter domination. Sure, the Spartans proved to be mediocre, but at the time they were ranked No. 10, and Notre Dame â?? well, who really knew what the Irish were, or would become?

Kelly told Swarbrick over the summer: "We're going to be very good." But the athletic director said he believed it when the Irish beat Stanford in overtime Oct. 13, at the season's midpoint. In the previous couple of years, Stanford had been "more physical, bigger and tougher" than the Irish. Not this time, though the question will endure: Did Stepfan Taylor get into the end zone?

But that's part of the equation, too.

"You've got to believe that somebody is shining down on this football team," Theismann said. "You've got to believe that."

By now, everyone knows the stats: Five victories by a touchdown or less. Three overtimes against Pittsburgh. So many games that could have gone either way, times when Notre Dame didn't seem to measure up against the other BCS contenders â?? but won anyway, as they all eventually lost. But back to Swarbrick, and Stanford:

"To survive it the way we did, that's when I thought we had a chance," he said.

Two weeks later, the Irish won at Oklahoma, and looked very good doing it, and gained more confidence. The defense shut down the high-powered Sooners. Notably, redshirt freshman quarterback Everett Golson took a huge step forward. He remains a work in progress. So does the entire offense â?? Saturday, they settled for five field goals (in six attempts). "We're still in process," Kelly said. "We're not there yet."

But somehow, they've arrived.

Listen to the Irish, they'll talk about camaraderie and closeness in the locker room, the sorts of intangible qualities that seem universal to winning teams. They'll note a core leadership group of fifth-year seniors, part of a recruiting class ranked No. 1 nationally by Rivals.com, that stuck through the coaching change. And they'll talk about how their coach changed, at least a little, after Notre Dame finished 8-5 his first two seasons.

After a loss to Florida State in the Champs Sports Bowl, Kelly introduced regular team meetings, every Monday at 5 p.m. Sometimes the topic was football, sometimes life. Sometimes it was serious, others not. But a guy who had seemed to spend much of his first two seasons yelling emerged kinder, gentler. How much did that play into this unbeaten run?

"I don't know what it is," said senior defensive end Kapron Lewis-Moore. "I don't know if we're closer, or what. It's a big jumble of things."

More tangibly, note how differently this team is built. Throughout his coaching career, Kelly's m.o. has been to spread it out and fling the football around. Instead, these Irish grind. During the offseason, Kelly saw a superior defensive front seven led by Te'o and recognized a significant strength. He had solid running backs, but an unsettled quarterback â?? Golson had evident ability, but no experience â?? so he changed strategy: ball-control offense, don't make mistakes, let the defense clamp down and smother opponents.

Golson has gotten better and more comfortable, evolving into an occasionally dangerous playmaker. But his potential, along with the entire offense, seems largely untapped. It doesn't seem to matter.

Late Saturday night, Lewis-Moore stood on one side of the tunnel, talking defense and still smiling over a fourth-quarter goal-line stand that ended USC's last realistic hope of the upset. A few feet away, kicker Kyle Brindza was surrounded by reporters, talking about all of those field goals. And Kelly was saying this game could have been any of those other games.

"That's how we played the game all year," he said. "That's how we got to 12-0."

Could they soon be 13-0? Especially if the opponent is Alabama, the Irish will spend the next month hearing about how they don't measure up â?? the same thing they heard all season, as they kept playing and winning the same game. For now, maybe this is enough: